Monthly Archives: November 2015

A periodic comet is one that shows up at regular intervals. One of the most famous is Halley’s Comet, depicted above in Scene 32 of the Bayeux Tapestry, which commemorates The Battle of Hastings (1066). This comet was named for the eighteenth-century astronomer, Edmund Halley. It had been popping up for millennia, but it was […]

To most, Celsius is just a temperature scale (and a thorn in the side of those of us who still think in Fahrenheit), but the name comes from Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius (born November 27th, 1701), who devised a scale that had 0° as the boiling point of water and 100° as the freezing point. […]

On November 17th, 1968, the American television network NBC abandoned its coverage of an NFL game between the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders and went to its scheduled, and much-advertised family special, Heidi. This shouldn’t have been a big deal. There was barely a minute of game time left and with the Jets […]